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TO THE 



CONGREGATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK, 

REVIEWING 

THE REPORT OF THEIR* COMMITTEE 

ON 

'' t!^e xtkim d % ^nierkan Cratt Bmttn 

TO THE 

SUBJECT OF SLAVERY." 

BY A CONGREGATIONALIST DIRECTOR^ 



BOSTON:"" 

CROCKER & BREWSTER, 47 WASHINGTON-STREET. 

• NEW YORK: 

• EDWARD P. RUDD, 18 ANN-STREET. 









IN F.XCKA wr5» 



•v 



^ ALETTER 



TO THE 

CONGREGATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK. 



Dear Brethren — At your late annual meeting at Spencerport, 
August 26, 1855, you are represented to have "unanimously adopted" 
the report of a Committee on the " relation of the leading benevolent 
societies to the subject of slavery." " The document was received by 
the association with a deep and painful solemnity ; evincing the grief 
of good men at the course of the Tract Society." "It was voted 
that it should be published with the minutes, and in the newspapers, 
and that the delegates of the association to corresponding bodies be 
requested to acquaint those bodies with its general purport," Thus 
the ecclesiastical organizations of the several New England states, 
and of Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Canada, and 
the general assembly of the (N. S.) Presbyterian church, with which 
your association hold correspondence, are to enjoy the light shed on 
a great question by the investigations of your Committee. 

The extraordinary importance given to this document will war- 
rant a somewhat detailed examination of its statements and reason- 
ings. There is the more occasion for inquiry as to the facts in the 
case, inasmuch as some of the Congregational journals have been 
unceasing in their reiteration of the charges of wrong-doing on the 
part of the American Tract Society. For the first time, these injuri- 
ous allegations have received a responsible endorsement by the unan- 
imous sanction of a grave ecclesiastical body. The officers of the 
Society have been occupied with other and better work than news- 
paper controversy ; and the friends of the Society, while grieved 
with the spirit in which the discussion has been conducted, seem, by 
common consent, to have maintained a discreet silence. In the hum- 
ble judgment of a member of your own honored communion, the 



time has come to examine the complaints against a peaceful Chris- 
tian institution, and to disabuse the public mind of those suspicions 
with which it has been needlessly filled. As unconscious, and it 
may be hoped unwilling, though responsible, parties to what appears 
to me to be vital wrong towards an unoffending Society, you are ap- 
pealed to for the exercise of candor and magnanimity in reviewing a 
document to which you have lent the influence of your unanimous 
approval. 

I wish to be understood distinctly on one point, at the outset. 
The right of individual members of benevolent societies, or of Chris- 
tian pastors, or associations of ministers, to investigate the affairs of 
religious charitable institutions — nay, the duty of investigating them, 
so as to have a secure basis for Christian confidence and cooperation, 
is undeniable. No responsible Society but courts and welcomes such 
inquiry. But it must be deliberate investigation, not inconsiderate 
reprehension ; candid inquiry, not fixed pre-judgment, or it is 
an abuse and a wrong. You intended no such wrong. You pro- 
ceeded with prudence and caution. A year ago, at your session at 
Madrid, you passed the following resolution : 

"Besolved — That Eev, Ray Palmer, D. D., Rev. J. P. Thompson, and 
Rev. S. W. Streeter be constituted a Committee to investigate, and 
to report at the next meeting of this body, in regard to the course 
pursued by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- 
sions, the American Home Missionary Society, the American Tract 
Society, the American Missionary Association, and the American 
Sunday-school Union, on the subject of slavery." See minutes, 
page 11. 

You expected and had a right to expect your Committee to "in- 
vestigated' a matter of grave concern, and bring before you the results 
of that investigation. You could not but have supposed that, in a 
matter involving the character of " the leading benevolent Societies," 
and their Committees and officers on a vital question — a matter of 
such moment as to warrant an appeal from your association to all 
the sister churches in the land with which you hold correspondence, 
perhaps implicating the character of our entire communion, and in- 
volving revolutionary action — the members of your Committee would 
confer, frequently and prayerfully, about their report. It must have 
been the conviction that you had thus attained the impartial truth, 
from impartial and pains-taking men, which induced "a deep feeling 
of sorrow and of shame, that the cause of Christ was reproached, 
the Christianity of the North misrepresented, and the Christianity of 



the South enfeebled by a policy which eliminates from the gospel, as 
pubUshed by the Tract Society, the heavenly spirit of equal love to 
all." 

The fads are these : the chairman of your Committee, whose 
name alone would entitle it to general credit — never saw the Report, 
till weeks after your meeting had been hdd, and was absent from the 
meeting at which it was presented. The report of your meeting 
leaves the impression tliat Dr, Palmer was present, and a party to 
this whole matter, no intimation to the contrary being given, either 
in newspaper or pamphlet, and his name appearing in capitals as 
"Register and Treasurer" in the account of your "organization" — 
see Independent, August 30 — though it must be presumed that some 
verbal explanation was made to the twenty or thirty members of your 
body. And the further fact is stated, without fear of contradiction, 
that the acting chairman of your Committee, whose multiform duties 
have required him to pass almost daily the door of the Tract house 
during the year of his appointment, has in no instance, within that 
period, made an inquiry of any officer or Committee-man connected 
with the institution on any point embraced in the Report ; while 
there is indubitable internal proof in the document itself, of a total 
lack of investigation of the public documents of the Society — with the 
exception of a pamphlet of sixteen pages, to be noticed hereafter — 
all which are furnished gratuitously for the asking ; and a lamentable 
ignorance of the extensive series of standard publications, censured 
without examination. Was this what you expected when you 
appointed a Committee for investigation? Were such your impres- 
sions when you adopted unanimously the document they brought 
before your body ? Is this the method of ascertaining the relations 
of benevolent societies? You will pardon me a somewhat careful 
investigation and dissection of the document you have given to the 
world under such solemn sanctions. In attempting this painful 
task, I propose to follow the order of the Report, with the intention 
of meeting every important allegation with Christian candor and 
impartial truth. 

The first topic of complaint in your Committee's Report is 
entitled 

"ALTERATION AND SUPPRESSION." 

" The first example of suppression and alteration of sentiments on 
the subject of slavery," say your Committee, "is in the reprint of 



Cotton Mather's Essays to do Good. The preface to the Tract Society's 
edition states that ' in this edition such portions of the original essays 
are omitted, and such changes have been made in the phraseology 
as might be expected after the lapse of more than a century since the 
work was written.' In Cotton Mather's book, as he wrote it, occurs 
this sentence : 

" ' that the souls of our slaves were more regarded by us ! that 
we might give a better demonstration that we despise not our own 
souls, by doing what we can for the souls of our slaves, [and not 
using them as if they had no souls 1 That the poor slaves and blacks 
which live with us may by our means be made candidates of the 
heavenly life ! ] How can we pretend to Christianity when we do no 
more to Christianize our slaves ?' 

" The edition of the Tract Society omits the sentences in brackets, 
and substitutes 'servants' for 'slaves.' 

"The following paragraph, which Mather wrote in the same con- 
nection, is suppressed in the Tract Society's edition: 'But if any 
servant of God may be so honored by him as to be made the success- 
ful instrument of obtaining from the British Parliament ' an act for 
the Christianizing of slaves in the plantations,'" etc., as quoted below. 

To the foregoing statements, your Committee add the sarcastic 
comment, "Such are the changes in phraseology which might be ex- 
pected after the lapse of more than a century." The preface as 
quoted by your Committee, said, ^^ portions of the original essays are 
omitted :" your Committee say, "such are the changes in phraseology." 

I have quoted from your report thus fully, that there may be no 
possible question as to the meaning of your Committee, which cer- 
tainly must be that the Tract Society are responsible for the alter- 
tion or suppression of Mather's anti-shivery views, and that thus injury 
is done to the cause of freedom. The " Unanimous Remonstrance," 
of a part of Mr. Patton's church, citing this book as proof that " those 
sentences which have condemned slavery as sinful have been stricken 
out" by the Tract Society, "for the avowed purpose of avoiding the 
expression of sentiments which would be distasteful to slave-holders," 
is followed by your Committee, as above. 

I join issue with your Committee, and with the "Unanimous 
Eemonstrance," on every count and phase of this indictment. The 
book of Mather was not altered by the Trad Society on the subject of 
slavery, but was printed word for word as in Dr. Burder's abridg- 
ment of this work ; no " Tract Society's edition" of it has been issued 
for ten years ; the original edition tiever contained anti-slavery views, 
but, on the contrary, must be condemned by your Committee them- 
selves as pro-slavery ; and the charge of alteration or suppression 
recoils upon the head of its authors, as I proceed to show. 



So much importance has been attached to this case as to warrant 
the quotation entire of the passages in question, from the reprint of 
the original edition of 1110. They are as follows: the passages in 
brackets are omitted in " Burder's edition :" those in italics or small 
capitals are sujp'pressed in your Committee's Report, 

MATHER ON "THE USAGE OF SLAVES." 

"Masters, yea, and mistresses too, must have their devices how to do 
good unto their servants ; how to make them the servants of Christ, and the 
children of God. God, whom you must remember to he ' your Master in 
heiren,^ has brought them, and put them into your hands. Who can tell 

WHAT GOOD HE HAS BROUGHT THEM FOR ? HoW IF THEY SHOULD BE THE 
ELECT OF God, FETCHED FROM AfRICA, OR THE InDIES, AND BROUGHT INTO 
YOUR FAMILIES, ON PURPOSE, THAT BY THE MEANS OF THEIR BEING THERE, 
THEY MAY BE BROUGHT HOME UNTO THE ShEPHERD OF SOULS 1 

" Oh, that the souls of our slaves were of more account with us I 
that we gave a better demonstration that we despise not our own 
souls, by doing what we can for the souls of our slaves, [and not 
using them as if they had no souls 1 That the poor slaves and blacks 
which Hve with us, may by our means be made the candidates of the 
heavenly life !] How can we pretend unto Christianity, when we do 
no more to Christianize our slaves ? Verily, you must give an account 
unto God concerning them. If they be lost through your negligence, 
what answer can you make unto " God, the Judge of all ?" Methinks, 
comvion principles of gratitude should incline you, to study the happiness of 
those, by whose obsequious labors your lives are so much accommodated. 
Certainly, they would be the better servants to you, the more faithful, the 
more honest, the more industrious, and submissive servants to you, for bring- 
ing them into the service of your common Lord. 

["But if any servant of God, may be so honored by him, as to be 
made the successful instrument of obtaining from a British Parlia- 
ment, 'an Act for the Christianizing of the slaves in the plantations,' 
then it may be hoped something more may be done than has yet 
been done, that the blood of souls may not be found in the skirts of 
our nation : a controversy of heaven with our colonies may be re- 
moved, and prosperity may be restored ; or, however, the honorable 
instrument will have unspeakable peace and joy in the remem- 
brance of his endeavors. In the meantime, the slave-trade is a spec- 
tacle that shocks humanity. 

"The harmless nations basely they trepan, 
And barter baubles for the bouIs of men ; 
The wretches, they to Christian climes bring o'er, 
To serve worse heath<;ns than they did before."] 

Mass. Sab. S. Soc. Edition, pp. 101-4. 

Your Committee rely on changes in this hook as proof of the 
"alteration or suppresslbn" of "sentiments which would be dis- 
tasteful to slave-holders 1 I" There is not a line in the whole pas- 



sage adverse to slave-holding, not a sentiment ^'distasteful to slave-hol- 
ders" — though there is just one line and a stanza reprobating the 
slave-trade — but it is wholly incidental to the main drift of Mather's 
thought, as is seen by his introducing it with the disjunctive 
phrase, "In the meantime." On the contrary, do not your Commit- 
tee, and those who sympathize with them, oppose and denounce the 
sentiment of Mather's " Original Essays," that slaves are "the elect of 
God, fetched from Africa, or the Indies, and hrought,' 

*' To serve worse heathens than they did before," 

"on purpose that by the means of their being here, they may be brought home 
unto the Shepherd of souls ?" That kind of Calvinism savors of the 
South, more than of New England, just now. And would not your 
Committee scout the idea of Mather, that gratitude for the " obsequious 
labors" of slaves should incline to "bringing them into the service of 
your common Lord" — not to make them free — not even to prepare 
them for emancipation — but because "they would certainly be the 
more faithful, the more industrious, and SUBMISSIVE servants to 
3'ou." Why, this is a sentiment so foreign from the literature of the 
anti-slavery stamp of our day, that the man who should pen it would 
be denounced without mercy. Yet these are the sentiments which 
define and control the meaning of the passage complained of for "sup- 
pression ;" — and these views are suppressed by your Committee, that 
they may make occasion for complaint against a Christian institution ! 
Had your Committee found two such virtually pro-slavery passages in 
the Tract Society's books, would they not have furnished a text for 
numberless diatribes on the subjection of that unfortunate institution 
to " the slave oligarchy ?" And would not your Committee have 
hailed one convincing proof of its delinquency? But your Com- 
mittee have no thunders for a " leading publishing Society " of their 
oicn denomination for issuing the edition of Mather containing these 
very pro-slavery passages ; while they denounce the Tract Society, 
on anti-slavery grounds, for not pulilishing these passages — or rather, 
for not publishing the part of them which, by mutilation, they tor- 
ture into an anti-slavery sense ! 

I repeat the remark, as furnishing one of the most astounding 
illustrations of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi the world ever wit- 
nessed — that your Committee, in charging the Tract Society with 
"the alteration and suppression of books penned by pure and holy 
minds to condemn slavery," have thems^ves so altered and sup- 
pressed the sentiments of their author as to make you believe, and 



as to alarm the public with the belief that passages m opposition to 
slavery were expunged from Mather ; whereas no line or sentiment 
of that character was in the book, but sentiments exactly the con- 
verse were there. 

The fact seems to have escaped the thoughts of your committee 
that Mather lived and wrote a century and a half ago, in the midst 
of colonial slavery — for aught that appears in his book, himself a 
holder of slaves* — and before "the great apostasy." Then it was not 
fatal heresy to think and write that God may have had great designs 
of mercy in bringing black heathen into Christian households to be 
evangelized, or that a care for their souls would make them more 
"industrious and submissive" "slaves." Jumping at the conclusion 
that whenever in a book the word "slaves" is found, the writer must 
be an abolitionist ; and noticing that in the "Tract Society's edition" 
that word did not occur so frequently, they seem to have seized the 
bait — and have " caught a Tartar." 

After your Report had been printed in the Independent, some of 
"the laymen of New York and Brooklyn" suggested to your com- 
mittee that they should at least have been as candid as Mr. Patton 
was ; and having borrowed their material from his "Unanimous Re- 
monstrance," they should have given the Tract Society the benefit of 
two facts stated therein, namely, that Mather's Essays was abridged 
by Rev. George Burder in 1807, which abridged edition was followed 
in this country ; and that the "Tract Society's edition" was dropped 

° Tliere are intimations in Mather's Essays that the author was himself a slave- 
holder. In the passages quoted in the text, he speaks of ' ' the poor slaves and blacks 
whicli live with us." And then follows "a paper under this title, the Resolution 
op A Master," beginning thus: 

" 1. I would always remember that my servants are in some sort my children," 
etc., the whole of which is consistent with the idea of his personal relationship as 
the ' ' master ' ' of slaves. The paper may or may not have been written for Ma- 
ther's personal use. But the exact reprint of the original edition contains this 
"note:" "These Evolutions were also doubtless written by Mather." And Bur- 
der' s edition has a similar note : "The modesty of the author thus expresses, prob- 
ably, his own production." We leave to the reader the question of Mather's con- 
nection with the slave system ; simply quoting the appendix to these resolutions 
as proof that he was a humane and considerate "master," if he was one : 

' ' Age is well-nigh sufiScient with some masters to obliterate every letter and 
action in the history of a meritorious life ; and old services are generally buried 
under the ruins of an old carcass. It is a barbarous inhumanity in men towards 
their servants, to make their small failings to be a crime, without allowing their past services 
to have been a virtue. Good God, keep thy servant from such ingratitude. Worse 
than villanous ingratitude !" Mathek's Essays, page 107. 



8 

in 1845. Being partly found out, they put a patcli on the pamphlet 
edition of their Report, intimating that Burder's edition was followed 
by the Tract Society, and that the book has been dropped from its 
catalogue ; but making a new issue, to this effect : 

BURDER'S "NOTE." 

"Burder stated in a note, that he had omitted passages relating to 
slavery, as being inapplicable to England. The original unaltered 
edition was accessible to the Publishing Committee of the Tract So- 
ciety, but by following Burder, they adopted his changes, and by 
dropping out his note, they left the reader uninformed of the nature and 
extent of those changes ;" and yet, although the book is dropped, 
they say, " the changes made in it, when published, show the settled 
policy of the Committee on the subject of slavery^' 

In an editorial in the Independent, Oct. 18, nearly two months 
after your Report was unanimously adopted and printed, another 
shift is made, thus : 

"It is due that an exact and complete statement of the facts should 
be given to the public. We will therefore state the case precisely as 
we understand it from competent and reliable sources. The constitu- 
ency desire to know these facts for their own guidance, and surely 
they are entitled to know them, unless the Tract Society is a fiction." 

The " facts " relate to the Tract Society's responsibility for the 
"note" in Burder's edition, alluded to above, respecting which they 
say, 

" The responsibility of the administration of the Tract Society 
for these alterations as transferred to their edition, must be deter- 
mined by three questions which admit of a categorical answer : 

" Did they know that Dr. Burder had made alterations and omis- 
sions on the subject of slavery ?" 

" Did the copy of Burder's edition before them contain his note, 
informing the reader that he had omitted the author's remarks on 
slavery 1 If so, with what design was that note omitted while Burder 
was followed in his alterations ? Was it because remarks on slavery 
were happily inapplicable to this country ?" etc. 

This, then, is " an exact and complete stateTnetit of the facts," after two 
months of supplementary investigation. The sum of all is, that 
Burder's " note, informing the reader that he had omitted the author's 
remarks on slavery," was omitted by the Tract Society. The main 
fact, without which the whole allegation is " a sham," namely, that 
there is not even the semblance of an anti-slavery sentiment in the 
book, is still " suppressed." 

But that " note," with its announcement of " remarks on slavery .'" 



let us look at it. Are spiritual appeals to men holding slaves to care 
for their souls that they may be "more submissive slaves," or are 
paragraphs on the treatment of slaves, " remarks on slavery''^ as a system ? 
Does a note referring to "the usage of slaves," mean ^'remarks on 
SLAVERY J*" The note to Burder's edition is as follows : 

fi^" " In the original work, some observations are made in this 
place with respect to the usage of slaves, ^^ [that is, the treatment of 
slaves;] "but as the subject has happily no connection with our 
country, the passage is here omitted." 

There is no more allusion to the morality of slave-holding or of 
slavery in the note, than there would be to marriage, in a note refer- 
ring to the education of children. I will answer your Committee's 
" three questions," then, by asking a few : 

Did they know that the original edition of Mather's Essays did not 
contain a sentiment in opposition to slavery ? If they did, are they 
honest ? If they did not, are they not reckless ? 

Did they know that the note to Burder's edition says nothing 
about "remarks on slavery" or "passages relating to slavery" as being 
omitted, but only alludes to observations on the " usage of slaves ?" ^ 
If they did, have they not imposed anew on the public ? If they did 
not, what do they mean by " an exad and complete statement of facts ?" 

Did they know the fact stated in the preface to the reprint, (in 
1845,) of the original edition, that the "first edition of the Essays pub- 
lished in ITIO, was never reprinted" — out of print for one hundred 
and thirty-five years ! — and that " it was so rare that a copy of it not 
long since sold at auction in Boston for about six dollars ?" If they did, 
what ground have they for the unqualified assertion that "the original 
unaltered edition ^cas accessible to the Publishing Committee ?" If they 
did not, why do they write about books they never examined ? [The 
original edition was n^t "accessible," and was not seen.] 

Did your Committee ever see the " original edition," or the " exact 
reprint" published by their own denominational concern, or even the 
" Note" to Burder's edition ? If yea, did they examine the two pages 
from which they pretend to quote, and find the "pro-slavery" senti- 
ments in connection with those respecting the "usage of slaves," 
which they dare not quote, and cannot endorse ? If nay, what reli- 
ance can be placed on the statements of any other part of their re- 
port? 

If Mather contained pro-slavery sentiments ; and if George Burder 
omitted them, in the heat of the anti-slavery controversy in England 



10 

in 180t, because they were "distasteful" to abolitionists; and the 
Publishing Committee followed Burder's edition ; and this act " shows 
the settled policy of the Committee on the stibject of slavery," is not the 
whole report of your Committee and the action based upon it an ab- 
surd farce ? 

So many misrepresentations have clustered around this book, that 
it may be helpful to recapitulate : Your Committee charged the Tract 
Society with suppressing Mather's anti-slavery sentiments : I have 
cited the entire passage to show that the only color for the charge 
was made by the suppression on the part of your Committee of ex- 
actly opposite sentiments. Your Committee held the Tract Society 
to account for changes made by Burder in 1807, and for a book which 
they ceased to publish ten years ago, having the means of knowing 
that such were the facts, but concealing their knowledge until after 
the adoption and publication of their report. Your Committee then 
changed their ground, and held the Tract Society responsible for all 
the changes made by Burder, because " the Society's edition omits 
Burder's note, and does not in any way inform the reader that Mather's 
remarks on slavery have been suppressed." I have shown that there is 
no such note ; but only one speaking of the " usage of slaves," which 
accords with the facts of the book. Your Committee insist that the 
courbe of the Tract Society in this case " stands as a way-mark of the 
policy of the Tract Society on the question of slavery." I have 
demonstrated that if this be so, and the Tract Society obliterates 
"pro-slavery" sentiments, your Committee have indicted the wrong 
party — they should have "arrested the action" of the publishers of 
Mather's " Original" Essays, if they have any consistency. Does not 
the whole case present one of the most remarkable instances to 
be found on record of "tables turned" by simple truth ? 

GURNET. 

I have occupied so much space with the review of your Commit- 
tee's notice cf Mather's Essays, that I dismiss their complaints of the 
change of four lines in Gurney's "Love to God" with a single remark. 
Your Committee and all othgr commentators on Gurney have "sup- 
pressed" the announcement on the title-page of the Tract Society's 
edition, that it is " Revised under the sanction of the Author." The 
changes, wise or unwise, are Joseph John Gurney's changes, and he 
is responsible for them. They have been defended in the " Indepen- 
dent" as harmless or needless. And your Committee have overlook- 
ed or t? suppressed " the fact that there are in the same chapter senti- 



m 

ments bearing on the slavery question which leave the author's 
" testimony " uilfluestionable, without the repetition of the illustra- 
tion which is varied in the passage complained of. Your Committee 
can settle their account with Gurney. 

• MARY LUNDIE DUNCAN 

I now come to the third and last "example," under this head — 
the memoir of Mary Lundk Duncan. Your Committee, in noticing 
the changes in this wotk, say, "In the preface we are told that a few 
pages which the Committee deemed of less interest to the general 
reader, or which alluded to points of disagreement among evangelical 
Christians, have been dropped." The reader is referred to the pref- 
ace, pp. 3, 4, for proof that no such passage exists there, nor is it to 
he found in any other part of the hook! The only announcement is on 
the title-page, "Abridged by the American Tract Society." 

Your Committee say, " In the original diary we find this entry 
under date of August 1st." 

"F/eedom has dawned this morning on the British colonies, [No 
more degraded lower than the brutes, no more bowed down with 
suffering from which there is no redress.] The sons of Africa have 
obtained the rights of«fellow-subjects — the rights of man, the immor- 
tal creation of God. [Now they may seek the sanctuary fearless of 
the lash ; they may call their children their own.] Hope will animate 
their hearts, and give vigor to their efforts, for more holy men to 
show them the way of salvation 1 The Lord keep them from riot and 
idleness ! They have been so little taught, that He only can avert 
confusion and tumult as the result of their joy." 

Is that the whole of "this entry under the date of August 1st?" 
Were your committee afraid that the complete quotation would con- 
tradict the tenor of the next count in their indictment— the " Avoid- 
ance of the Subject ?" Why, when they find space for twenty lines 
omitted by George Burder about an act of the " British Parliament," 
did they not find space for the seven other lines of Mary's "entry," 
which they profess to quote entire, and which are essential to the 
point at issue ? Was it because the fact that there are " some Chris- 
tians among their number, who will influence others," would prove 
that they were "not degraded lower than the brutes?" And must 
that fact be suppressed to suggest some consideration, other than the 
true one, for the omission of an extravagant representation of an 
"enthusiastic young lady" of nineteen? The lines suppressed by 
your committee are these : " SoTne Christians there are among their 
number, who will influence the others. My poor fellow-travellers tf^ough 



12 

lifers short wilderness, may I meet with mjny of you in heaven, tohere even 
I can hope to dwell, through the love of my risen Lord^ There none will 
despise the negro, whom Jesus has pitied and redeemedP And this in 
the Tract Society's edition. Had your committee examined the 
l)Ook — as they did not even the preface — they might have found the 
Tract Society's Mary saying, "What can / do for my oppressed 
brethren ? Let me bear poor Africa on my heart, and seek a speedy 
emancipation for her sons, not only from the rod of the oppressor, 
but from the bonds of iniquity. Long have they dwelt in a night of 
darkness and sighing, but their cry has entered into the ears of the 
Lord of Sabaoth. may they now be rescued by his power 1" 

But your committee do not concern themselves with what is in 
the books, only with what is out of them ; for they are about to 
show " the studious avoidance of the subject," and their plan might 
be thwarted if they should stumble on the facts. 

Will it be claimed, with the above extracts in sight, that there 
is any suppression of Mary Lnndie's rejoicing over the emancipation 
of slaves in the West Indies, or of her sympathy for those in bojidage ? 
Her "testimony" is explicit — so explicit that your committee felt 
constrained to suppress it in part, lest the very passage complained 
of should show that, " in the ordinary and na'turiil course of its pub- 
lications, the Tract Society docs bear, with its legitimate influence, 
upon the system of slavery." 

The Independent itself says of the passage, " It is permitted to ap- 
pear that the subject of the memoir had an earnest sympathy with 
the abolition of slavery in the W^st Indies. Every reader, north and 
south, sees in a moment, on the perusal of this passage, that Mary 
Lundie Duncan was what is called an abolitionist. * * If southern 
public opinion can tolerate the passage as it stands in the abridg- 
ment, why may it not tolerate the passage as it stands in the original 
edition." 

The omission of the lines complained of strengthens the testi- 
mony, rather than weakens it — for they were not true of *the condi- 
tion of the bondmen of the West Indies, and are not true of the bond- 
men of the United States — and all exaggeration is weakness. Is it 
true of a class numbering a larger proportion of professed Christians 
of an evangelical faith than almost any other, that they are " de- 
graded loioer than the brutes," or that they are restrained from "the 
sanctuary" by "fear of the lash?" And if even the Independent 
(see No. for Jan. 25, 1855) can "find no fault with the omission of 
pas*iges eulogistic of Mr. George Thompson, whose standing in his 



n 

own country, among religious people, is not such that any religious 
Tract Society neftd hesitate about expunging from the diary of an 
enthusiastic young lady any passages, in prose or verse, expressive 
of her admiration of his eloquence " — there need be as little hesita- 
tion, certainly, in abridging the rejoicings in the same " diary of an 
enthusiastic young lady," when mistaken in fact, and exaggerated in 
expression. 

It will thus be seen that the defence of the Society is complete 
without resorting to the constitutional limitations, which will be sub- 
sequently discussed. 

Your Committee raise another issue respecting this book which 
it may be well to notice, as numberless misstatements have been 
made respecting it, the essence of which may be found in their 
report. Your Committee state that the author of Mary's Memoir 
"never gave even a forced consent, (to the abridgment,) till long 
after the change was made." The Publishing Committee state in 
their announcement of the book in 1852, as soon as it was issued, 
that it " was intrusted to the Committee by the esteemed author t© 
be abridged for circulation by the Society, that it might thus be 
borne to thousands whom it would not be likely to reach in book- 
sellers' channels." The question of veracity which your Committee 
have seen fit to raise, may safely be left to the candor of the reader, 
and the respective position of the parties. The same article in the 
Independent which professed to give " an exact and complete statement 
of the facts" concerning Mather's Essays, gives some " facts" respect- 
ing Mary Lundie on the point now under discussion. It puts into, 
Mrs. Duncan's mouth eight lines in marks of quotation, as " almost 
the words" "she had written from Scotland ;" while the only letter 
she ever wrote the Tract Society, the one authorizing the Committee 
to abridge the work at their discretion, contains no suck words, nor any 
thing implying the same ideas, nor did she ever express those ideas to 
any Executive officer of the Society. 

What your Committee say about " a forced consent," may be in- 
tended to refer to a fact which, when fully known, ought to be final 
with the professed friends of Mrs. Duncan : that when one of the offi- 
cers of the Society was in Edinburgh in 1853, and after the Inde- 
pendent and kindred journals had made an ado about the Memoir, in 
a personal interview with Mrs. Duncan he tendered his influence to 
have the Memoir dropped from the series of the Tract Society, if 
she preferred that course to the continued circulation of the abridged 



14 

edition : to which she replied, in substance, with characteristic 
warmth, " God forbid 1 The book is blessing thousarkds of habitations 
North and South, which it would not reach in other forms. No : let 
it go on, and may God bless it to many precious souls I" I pity the 
man or woman who cannot respond, Amen ! to the sensible Chris- 
tian sentiment of the mother and biographer of Mary Lundie Duncan* 

"EXAMPLES." 

In concluding this part of the review, I feel constrained to direct 
your attention to the injurious and disingenuous method in which 
these three publications are brought forward as '^examples of altera- 
tion and suppression." "The fact of suppression has been made 
conspicuous in two or three prominent examples " — " the first exam- 
ple" — "another example" — "still another example" — "and such are 
the examples." What is the obvious import of this language, if it be 
not that your Committee were cognizant of numerous facts of the 
same general class, and extending through the catalogue of the So- 
ciety's publications, of which those cited were fair " examples ?" An 
honest merchant who exhibits a specimen of a class of goods, is pre- 
sumed to have a stock of those goods for the market. A reviewer 
who singles out examples of the style of a voluminous author, is sup- 

** Since this paragraph was written, I have had the opportunity of verifying 
the essential accuracy of the statement from two independent sources. The fol- 
lowing is an extract from a letter of the officer of the Tract Society alluded to 
above, dated "Edinburgh, June 3, 1853." 

"I called on Mrs. Duncan last night, with the Rev. Mr. P . She received 

me kindly. ** * ^ When speaking of the memoir of her daughter, the topic being 

introduced by Mr. P , I said to her, Mrs. Duncan, if it is your wish that your 

daughter's memoir should cease to be circulated in the Tract Society's channels in 
its present form, I will use what influence I have with the Committee, to secure 
its immediate suppression. However desirable it may be for the great purposes for 
which it was written to continue its circulation, and whatever good to souls may 
be effected by it, I am confident that the Committee would lay it aside, if it is 
your deliberate desire. 

"'By no means,' was her reply, substantially. ^ I should have preferred thai 
my daughter's views of West India emancipation had been retained; but as it is, I hope it 
xdU do good; and I am satisfied.' She has never seen our edition. Would it not be 
well to inclose several neat copies in Greig and Son's package, ordered herewith." 

I am also permitted to maJte the following extract from the diary of Rev. Mr. 
P , made the very evening of this conversation : 

" J\me 2. — In the evening, called with Rev. Mr. , who conversed with Mrs. 

Duncan about the Tract Society and her memoir of Mary Lundie. After a long 
conversation and explanation, Mr. offered to write to the Publishing Com- 
mittee and use his influence to have the book suppressed, if Mrs. Duncan wished 
it. '0 no!' she said, 'I am perfectly satisfied with it as it is. The essential 
features of my daughter's character are preserved, and I hope it will be useful.' " 



1# 

posed to furnish what is characteristic of the writer, and would be 
justly considered blameworthy if the "examples" were solitary 
instances. 

Indeed, the odium excited against the Tract Society has been 
caused chiefly by the impression which your report expressly sanc- 
tions, that the expurgations of Mather, Gurney, and Duncan are 
" examples " of a large class, if not of the whole series, of the Tract 
Society's issues, and that thus " a policy," is pursued, " which elimi- 
nates from the gospel, as published by the Tract Society, the heav- 
enly spirit of equal love to all." Had your association been told, in 
Christian candor, that after diligent search not another example of 
an omission in reference to slavery has been cited ; or had they 
conceded, as the Michigan report does — " we rejoice to say there 
are not many such" — would not your action have been modified, and 
would you not have paused before raising the cry of revolution ? 

It is a matter of profound surprise that so large a business can 
have been carried forward so long, on so small a capital. The staple 
of all the "letters," newspaper articles, resolution?, and reports of 
ecclesiastical bodies on the subject, for three years, has been found 
in the three books just reviewed — one of which the Society does not 
publish and did not alter, and had not an anti-slavery word in it to 
be expunged ; another changed in four lines by the author himself, 
but still retaining his "testimony" in the same chapter, and the third 
so distinct in its testimony as to satisfy the Independent. Why, if 
your committee knew of no other omissions, did they not give the 
Tract Society the benefit of such a candid statement ? That would 
have been manly and ingenuous, as compared with the five times 
repeated " example " of wrong-doing. 

"AVOIDANCE OF THE SUBJECT." 

Your Committee appear to suppose that they have cleared the 
way for their new count in the indictment of the Tract Society, 
namely, the " avoidance of the subject," by suppressing a portion of 
" the entry in Mary Lundie Duncan's diary," which shows the con- 
trary ; by omitting to notice a passage on slavery in the same chap- 
ter in Gurney on which they comment ; and by converting the pro- 
slavery sentiments in Mather into anti-slavery sentiments — neither^of 
which sentiments were touched by the Society. They say, " Not less 
evident, is the studious avoidance of this topic, in all the later publica- 
tions of this Society. Some of the earlier publications of the Tract 

2 



16 

Society contain incidental allusions to slavery as an evil and a sin.'* 
And again, "Of later years the subject of slavery has jeither been 
avoided altogether in the publications of the Society, or has been 
alluded to with a measured circumlocution that betrays a timid mind, 
and renders nugatory the passing reference." "This studious avoid- 
ance of the subject, where alone the candid discussion of it can be 
of any moment, is a sad evidence of that fatal spell ^hich the great 
dragon of the South has cast over many good men in the land," 

What is the obvious meaning of this language, if it be not that in 
"the later publications of the Society," there has been a#defection 
from the ground of its earlier publications, which "contain incidental 
allusions to slavery as an evil and a sin," and which meet your Com- 
mittee's requisition that it should " not be turned into a machinery 
of anti-slavery propagandism, not made distinctly or prominently an 
anti-slavery Society, but brought to bear, with its legitimate influ- 
ence, in the ordinary and natural course of its publications upon the 
system of slavery." So that, if it should appear that its "later publi- 
cations" are consistent with the current issues of former years, in this 
behalf, the whole allegation falls to the ground. 

But before entering on this discussion, allow me to ask the author- 
ity for the sweeping charge ? Have your Committee found time to 
collate the bundred thousand pages of the Tract Society's publica- 
tions, in two thousand different books and tracts, so as to speak of 
their own knowledge 7 Or, do they take for granted the assertions of The 
Congregationalist : "On this great theme an utter paralysis has fall- 
en on them. They do not even whisper. They are as silent as the 
grave." Or of the Congregational Herald : " If the works it pub- 
lishes contain a hint, sentence, or allusion reflecting on this institu- 
tion, [slavery,] the Society weeds it out, and exterminates it, as if it 
were a reflection on some divine and sacred institution." Or of the 
Michigan Keport : " It has preserved a rigid silence" But a committee 
of " investigation " could only be safe in any such generalization by care- 
ful investigation. The presumption is decidedly against their having 
pursued this course, however, with the positive proof before us, that 
even the preface of two pages in a specific volume under investiga- 
tion, and from which a pretended quotation is made, had not been 
SQpn by your committee. The truth seems to be that this charge is 
one of a numerous class caught up from the newspapers ; and even 
if it were true, your committee did not avail themselves of the only 
method. of verifying it. 



If 

Is it true that there is a special "avoidance of the stibjed" in "the 
^^cr publications" of the Tract Society? It certainly is not true of the 
books complained of by your committee, which happen to be among 
the "later publications." On this and other points your committee 
certainly cannot object to the "Independent" as authority — however 
they might treat the documents of the Society. And the "Inde- 
pendent" cites the very passage in Gurney of which your committee 
complain, as an "example" of the passages in which "oppression and 
systems of oppression are condemned, and which, as every reader 
must feel, are more applicable to slavery, than to any other system of 
injustice." I have already referred to passages unaltered in the same 
"later publication," with a more unmistakable import. The same 
journal, as previously quoted, alludes to Mary Lundie, and cites the 
"entry in her diary, Aug. 1," infidl from the Tract Society's edition, 
to show that the Society does not "avoid the subject," and adds, 
"Every reader, north and south, sees in a moment, that Mary Lun- 
die abhorred slavery as violating the "rights of man." Is not this a 
"later publication," and one of the "ordinary publications?" But 
the Independent of Jan. 25, 1855, occupies a whole column with the 
great, though simple work of Justin Edwards — till his death a mem- 
ber of the "Publishing Committee"' — of which it says, "This [Family 
Bible, with notes] is a far more efficient book against slavery than any 
other which has yet received the imprimatur of the Committee. It 
has, as we understand, a rapid sale at the south and south-west ; and 
it is admirably adapted to the use of readers whose literary attain- 
ments are of a humble order. How this work touches slavery, may 
best be shown by a few citations.". Passage after passage is then 
cited in illustration of this remark, and the wish is expressed that a 
"separate tract" "might be published" therefrom, "for a wide distri- 
bution, especially in the northern states." But is not this one of "the 
later publications ?" And if it were otherwise, the objection Avould be 
without force as applied to a series of standard publications, all of 
which are reprinted from year to year, and generally in more editions 
than one each year — and all of them without date. What foundation 
then is there for the sweeping charge of your committee? 

THE REAL ISSUE. 

Had your committee raised the issue that, instead of " avoiding 
the subject," the Publishing Committee have not gone out of the "nat- 
ural and ordinary course of their publications" to discuss it, and 
recorded their censure because they have " not turned the Tract So- 



18 

ciety into a machinery of anti-slavery propagandism," and have " not 
made it distinctly or prominently an anti-slavery society," which it 
is the manifest end and object of the present agitation to accomplish, 
and on that issue made their appeal to your body and to all the 
churches in the United States and the British provinces associated 
with you ; and to all the members of the Society, for revolution — your 
report would have had the merit of consistency and truthfulness. 
That is the real issue : all else, to quote the elegant language with 
which you were led to the adoption of the report, is " a sham — a 
sham." It is needless to go beyond the records of your meeting for 
proof that the real intention of the agitators in this crusade is to pre- 
cipitate the Society on the sea of sectional strife, under anti-slavery 
pilotage, even at the hazard of wreck and ruin. Thus in the remark- 
able speech which followed the reading of your report, by a " member 
by courtesy," may be found this pregnant passage, as quoted in the 
Independent and Congregationalist: " TTie inauguration of a new policy 
tcould unquedionably arrest the action of the Society. But after long and 
careful thought on the subject, he was convinced that the present policy 
debauches the conscience of the north and of the south, and he had 
come to have the decided opinion that if there were no connection of Chris- 
tian bodies at the north and south, Christianity would exert twice the pow- 
er at the south that it now does. * * The attempt to make a church 
or denomination "national," impairs the influence of Christianity and 
the gospel in respect to crime at the south. ** If the Committee of 
the Tract Society were released from the temptation to suit the cow- 
ardice — not the conscience — of the south, there would at once be free- 
dom of action there." " Let them take care of themselves there, and 
find out whether they have any religion or not. And I think they 
have some." 

Here is the real issue, boldly made, "after long and careful 
thought," and as a corollary from and practical application of your 
report. It is to "arrest the action of the American Tract Society, ^^ by 
" the inauguration of a new pdicyP It is to denationalize a great 
Christian institution by abo! if ionizing it. It is to make ten millions 
of men — who are so bad that we must withhold cooperation, and 
refrain from benevolent intercourse, and even withdraw gospel agon- 
izes from them — better, by leaving them to " take care of themselves, 
and find out whether they have any religion or not." 
' Here, at last, is the hinging point of this discussion : Shall the 
American Tract Society, ." with its tried and established character for 



m 

usefulness, with its catholic evangelical basis, with its rich catalogue 
of publications, with its efficient system of colportage, with its hal- 
lowed memories, with its well-husbanded resources," be revolutionized 
in its catholic character and national position, or to use the express- 
ive language employed in your meeting, — "sustaining the views of the 
Eeport" — shall the " action of the Society be arrested by the inaugura- 
tion of a new [abolition] policy ?" The language of your Report says, 
"Not." The accoucheur of the Report, "sustaining the views of the 
Report," says, "Yes." "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the 
hands are the hands of Esau." One means it ; the other says it. 
The bare knowledge that such is the real issue, will arouse from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, from the tropics to the Superior, through all 
the ranks of the churches, and from Christian anti-slavery men them- 
selves, an indignant negative. 

Against any such revolution, truth and justice revolt, and hold 
up, as a sufficient shield, the next topic of your Committee — 

*'THE CATHOLIC BASIS." 

The fundamental rule for the guidance of the Publishing Commit- 
tee is found in the first article of the Constitution, which is as fol- 
lows : 

"This Society shall be denominated the American Tract Society, 
the object of which shall be to diffuse a knowledge of our Lord Jesus 
Christ as the Redeemer of sinners, and to promote the interests of vital god- 
liness and sound morality, by the circulation of Religious Tracts, calcu- 
lated TO RECEIVE THE APPROBATION OF ALL EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS." 

Your Committee deem it necessary to establish the point, so 
elaborately argued in the " Unanimous Remonstrance," that this 
article of the constitution " refers only to a doctrinal difference of a 
theological character, and to the sentiments of denominations rather 
than individuals." The most subtle casuistry, and, I may say, the 
veriest sophistry, has been employed to fix this interpretation. 
The facts of history, and the suggestions of common-sense, scatter 
these reasonings to the wind. Happily some of those who drafted 
the constitution are still living, and their record of the facts of its 
adoption is accessible. One of them states that " when the draft of 
the constitution was first read to the Rev. Dr. James Milnor, he pro- 
posed adding the words ' and sound morality,^ as indicating the legiti- 
mate fruit of 'vital godliness,' which the Society would by no means 
.undervalue, and they were unanimously agreed to." And farther, 



20 

"The first article, as adopted in March, (at a preliminary meeting,) 
closed with the words, ' calculated to receive the approbation of evan- 
gelical Christians of all denominations.^ " While this article was under 
consideration, the lamented Rev. John Summerfield suggested that, 
as the Society was to be a union of individual Christians, and not of 
Christian denominations, he should like, instead of " evangelical Chris- 
tians of all denominations," to substitute " all evangelical Christians." 
Dr. Milnor, being in the chair, responded, that he should cordially con- 
cur in such a change, as indicating the true character and spirit ol 
the Society ; other members of the convention concurred ; and the 
phrase, "all evangelical Christians" was unanimously adopted. 

To secure the carrying out of the principles and spirit of this 
catholic basis, article 6 provides that " the Publishing Committee 
shall contain no two members from the same ecclesiastical connec- 
tion ; and no tract shall be published to which any member of that 
committee shall object." 

The careful reader will perceive that this basis is widely different 
from that of a church organization, and that by its own limitations 
this association for a specific purpose assumes no such general re- 
sponsibilities as rest on the church and ministry. It is a voluntary 
association of individual Christians, to do a certain good by certain 
means — leaving its own members in other relations, and all other 
associations in their several relations, to promote, without hinder- 
ance, such enterprises as they please. Matters of agreement, what- 
ever they may be, are alone befitting on such a platform. And the 
judgment of the Publishing Committee both as to the fact of agree- 
ment, and the expediency of action, must be unanimous and final — 
or there can be no security for harmony. 

ARE political AND AGITATING QUESTIONS EXCLUDED? 

With what semblance of truth is the claim set up that matters of 
"doctrinal difference of a theological character ^^ and "the sentiments of 
denominations" alone are excluded from this catholic platform ; and 
that consequently it may be made the bear-garden for contending 
factions on questions of morality and reform ! " How can two walk 
together except they be agreed," on other than abstract questions of 
theological science ? Are not social and moral questions the divisive 
topics of our times, and of some past years — overriding all great po- 
litical questions, and even hushing the din of sectarian controversy 
with their, discordant cries ? And were the planks of the Tract So-- 



2i 

ciety's platform so loosely laid as to make it the legitimate battle- 
ground for these thousand and one isms ? 

Your Committee seem to think so ; and in their attempt to con- 
vict the Tract Society of inconsistency in the practical application of 
the gospel to some social and moral evils and not to others, they be- 
tray an utter want of knowledge both of what the Society has done 
and what it has not done. Thus, without multiplying examples, 
they say, " However evangelical Christians are agreed in their esti- 
mate of the sin of drunkenness and the evils of intemperance, there is 
among them a notorious diversity of opinion as to the remedy of 
these evils, and as to the principles and measures upon which the 
temperance reform should be conducted. Yet this does not deter 
the Society from publishing tracts upon one side of this now political 
and agitating question." 

Craving pardon for the flat contradiction, "it does deter the So- 
ciety from publishing tracts upon orie side of this now political and 
agitating question." So long as temperance was a purely moral, and 
in a high sense a religious question, involving directly the well-being 
for time and eternity of tens of thousands of souls, it was a befitting 
topic of discussion in " religious tracts," and these tracts were " cal- 
culated to receive the approbation of all evangelical Christians," and 
have received it, so far as known, with entire unanimity. But when 
the "wine-question" was in dispute, and when the "Maine Law" 
agitation threw the subject into the whirlpool of politics, and other 
"political and agitating" aspects of the Reform appeared, the Tract 
Society was necessarily " deterred from publishing tracts upon oiiesid^' 
of those political and agitating contests — yet without any insinua- 
tion being thrown out from any quarter, we believe, that this impli- 
ed hostility to temperance men, or sympathy with the liquor traffic. 
By common consent, the Tract Society's catholic basis seems to have 
been understood as restraining it from political and partisan alli- 
ances — just as, in the somewhat parallel case, it has restrained it 
from sectional entanglements, and from all ists and isms involving an- 
gry controversy and divisions among evangelical Christians. So gen- 
eral has this conviction been, that so far as known, not a dollar was 
ever contributed to the Society, with a view to " anti-slavery propa- 
gandism," and no tract or book on slavery was ever written for, or 
laid before the Publishing Committee ! 

That the subject of slavery has become a "political and agitat- 
ing question," will not be denied. It is complicated, more or less, 



22 

with all the commercial, political, social, and religious interests and 
institutions of the land. It awakens more of imbittered and exasper- 
ated feeling in its discussion than any or all other political or moral 
questions. It sunders churches, overwhelms parties, absorbs the po- 
litical and religious press, and convulses a continent. That the sys- 
tem involves evils of vast magnitude, is claimed by good men at the 
North, and conceded by good men at the South ; and that is nearly 
the limit of approximation in sentiment among evangelical Christians. 
A^s to the nature and extent of these evils, and especially the remedy 
for them, few men either at the North or South, are agreed. It can- 
not be asserted with any positiveness, that the limit of agreement 
among*evangclical Christians extends beyond the sentiments contain- 
ed in the Tract Society's series. Or, if it does, it would not be easy 
to show that sound wisdom, or the claims of Christian duty, or the 
best good of the slave, would demand the "inauguration of a new 
policy" which would "arrest the action of the Tract Society" in its 
beneficent work, at a time and in circumstances which imperiously 
call for centripetal more than for centrifugal agencies, and for vigor- 
ous evangelization, more than for new elements of disintegration and 
discord. It may be argued that there ought to be such unanimity 
of sentiment as would warrant the "inauguration of a new policy." 
If so, is there such unity ? Where is it exhibited ? What proof 
that it exists ? What overwhelming proof, in the endless divisions 
and agitations of our day, that the "inauguration of this new policy" 
would be at the expense of the peace, prosperity — nay, the very exist- 
ence of the Tract Society ; or, if it lingered, would it not be with a 
broken constitution, a violated faith, and a perjured conscience ? 

"THE COMMITTEE'S DEFENSE." 

Probably no portion of the Report of your Committee made a 
more profound sensation in your body than that occupying two- 
thirds of a column as printed in the Independent, entitled, " The 
Committee's Defense." There is certainly none that exhibits more 
ingenuity. It is but justice to say, that this part of the report is 
original, and is not taken from Jay or Patton. Your Committee say, 

"Most humiliating, too, is the defence of its policy which the 
officers of the Tract Society have lately issued. Several churches, as- 
sociations, religious journals, and private individuals, members of the 
Society and contributors to its funds, having remonstrated with the 
Executive Committee upon their policy on the subject of slavery, the 



m 

Committee have at length issued a document by way of vindication, en- 
titled, ' Principles and Facts of the American Tract Society,' This 
reply is a beautiful specimen of typography, embellished with a very 
pretty picture of the Tract House. But the document itself is a 
most remarkable illustration of the timid policy of the Committee 
upon the subject of slavery. It ignores the very question at issue. Only 
by the most remote allusion does it recognize any dissatisfaction with 
the course of the Committee on slavery — a system which it does not 
so much as name in a tract of sixteen pages. That allusion is in the 
following terms : ' This Society was formed by Christians of various 
denominations, to publish the great evangelical truths in which they 
are agreed. It is thus precluded from publications involving subjects 
of controversy among evangelical Christians. Nor can topics of a 
local or sectional character bo expected in the issues of a national 
catholic institution." 

" The remainder of this document treats entirely of the material 
interests of the Tract Society, of its mechanical arrangements, its 
evangelical character, and its general work ; repeating the common- 
places of every annual report, of every sermon by secretary or agent, 
and of almost every number of the American Messenger." 

We have proof, at last, that during the year of your Committee's 
investigations, one of the two thousand pubhcations of the Tract So- 
ciety has been found in their hands ; and without stopping to notice 
the "alteration and suppression" by which the passage they pretend 
to quote is garbled and mutilated — excluding the formal statement of 
the constitutional basis of the Society, and annulling the testimony 
as to the harmonious working of the union principle ; and without 
questioning the omniscience of your committee, who claim to know 
the contents of "every sermon by secretary or agent" — I proceed to 
examine the mode of treatment accorded to this alleged " defence of 
tlie Committee." 

HOW THE "DEFENSE" IS TREATED. 

If it were a "Defense," one would think that an official document 
from a source at least respectable, would be entitled to respectful 
dealing in an official report to a ministerial body — especially if it 
might be regarded as the only " answer" to a persistent assault of 
three years from " several churches, associations, religious journals, 
and private individuals." The seven lines quoted from the document 
as furnishing the whole of the "Committee's Defence" would of course 
be discussed with candor, and the simple principles they announce 
might have been controverted by fair argumentation. Instead of this, 
your Committee, with solemn Christian and ministerial vows upon 
them, in the presence of a b^dy of ministers of the gospel of truth 



24 

and peace, having set up a man of straw, catecliize him after this 
fashion : 

" Good men, men of standing in the church and in society, whole 
churches and associations, the rehgious press, all ask of the Society, 
* Why do you not, in some of your many thousand publications, con- 
demn that systematic wrong which defrauds the laborer of his hire V 

" The Committee answer — 'The Tract House at 150 Nassau-street, 
is eighty feet by ninety-four, and five stories high, besides basement 
for storing paper, and cellar for coal, p, 1,' 

" The inquirers ask, Why do you not in some of your varied pub- 
lications, enforce the duty of teaching all men to read, of giving all 
men the Bible ; and condemn the crime of keeping any from the light 
of God^ word V 

"The Committee answer — 'The Society employs 619 colporteurs, 
and publishes more than 200,000 copies of the Family Christian Al- 
manac, p. 9.'" 

And the same witty dialogue is carried on through half a column 
of your Report, as published in the Independent. Instead of occu- 
pying the space with quoting it in full, suppose this kind of logic 
should be applied in other quarters, thus : 

Numberless readers of religious newspapers having " the largest 
circulation in the world," finding little else than sectional and secta- 
rian controversy in their columns, turn their famishing souls to the 
neglected Bible, and ask, " What must I do to be saved ?" 

The Bible "answers" — "Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher," 
Exodus, chap. 1 : 4. " At Parbar westward, four at the causeway, 
and two at Parbar." 1 Chronicles, chap. 26 : 18. 

The inquirers ask, Why does not the " religious press" have some 
religion in it, and where can we find a newspaper that does not " cru- 
cify the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." 

The Independent "answers" — "The New York Picayune is the 
most original comic paper now published in America. Each number 
contains from four to six illustrations, being hits at the times, Quizzi- 
ble and Risible. It contains the quaint and satirical lectures of Mr. 
Julius Caesar Hannibal, the greatest darkey lecturer of the day." 
Independent, p. 21, A. D., 1855. 

The ingenuity of a school-boy might overwhelm any antagonist 
with the number and variety of these ludicrous citations ; and infi- 
delity has not been sparing of this low and vulgar logic. But is it 
worthy of Christian men and Christian bodies in the pursuit of truth ? 
Your Committee seem to have had a twinge of something like con- 
science, for they add the comment, " ^F^ /live not caricatured the doc- 



36 

ument issued from the Tract House as a virtual reply to the inquiries 
and remonstrances of thousands of friends of the Society, as to its 
policy on the subject of slavery." 

"WHAT THE "DEFENSE" REALLY IS. 

But it is time to show what this "Defense of the Committee" is, 
which has been made the butt of ridicule, and the scorn of your Com- 
mittee. The Tract Society, like every other institution, has been ac- 
customed from its foundation, to have for convenient circulation, a 
brief document setting forth the principles of its organization and 
the facts of its work. Six or eight years ago the substance of the 
pamphlet of sixteen pages was issued in twelve pages, AvithouJ; a cov- 
er, " embellished with a veiy pretty picture of the Tract House," and 
tens of thousands were circulated by colporteurs and agents. After 
various revisions, the document being out of date, was revised in 
1854, and a cover put on it, and what had no name other than " the 
American Tract Society," under the " pretty picture," was entitled 
"Principles and Facts of the American Tract Society." It was 
printed in 1854 in 200,000 numbers of the American Messenger, and 
sent by mail to every minister of the gospel in the land whose address 
was known, as a means of information, and an agency for enlisting 
benevolent aid. If it was a " Defense of the Committee," they did not 
know it, until told by your Committee. The fact that "it ignores 
the very question at issue" weakens somewhat the testimony of your 
Committee on this point ; and perhaps would have justified your 
Committee in their daily walk past the Tract House in inquiring 
within, how long it had been published ? and what its object was ? 
before assuming that it was " lately issued," and that " at length the 
Executive Committee have issued a document by way of vindication :" 
or, if this involved too much investigation, they might surely have re- 
ferred to the files of the " Independent," where, nearly a year ago, in 
discussing the very matter now in hand, the editors make a respect- 
ful allusion to " a little pamphlet recently published, (^Principles and Facts 
of the American Tract Society,") from which they quote a paragraph, 
without mutilation, to show " what it (the Society) has done in rela- 
tion to slavery." But the editors, though calling loudly and often for 
a " vindication" or a " reply" or an " answer," had not then made the 
sapient discovery that a pamphlet which "ignores the whole sub- 
ject," and which was then " recently published," was " the Committee's 
Defence" " lately issued" in the September following 1 

Your Committee wax indignant, and are "lofty like Luther," in 



26 

their denunciation of "such an answer as is given in this pamphlet to 
the respectful inquiries of thousands of the supporters of the Society," 
which, thej say, " however well meant, is little less than an insult to 
the understanding of the Christian public." I cannot descend to the 
exchange of opprobrious epithets with your Committee ; but I submit 
whether it is not something more than " an insult to the understand- 
ing of the Christian public," for a committee of investigation to mis- 
represent the object, and caricature the contents, and bring contempt 
upon the authors of a benevolent appeal of a Christian institution, 
when their own organ, in its own editorials, furnished the materials 
of disproving every allegation and witticism they have manufactured 
out of the only document or publication of the Tract Society they 
seem to have examined. 

Your Committee's attempt to mend the matter when they discov- 
ered, after its " unanimous adoption," but before the publication of 
the report, that they had made an egregious blunder, to say the least — 
by announcing in the Independent that "since the report was in 
type, we have heard it alleged that the pamphlet entitled * Principles 
and Facts of the American Tract Society,' is a stated issue, revised 
from year to year," — only adds to their confusion. For they say, 
"But it will be found on examination to contain the substance of 
what has appeared in the Messenger and elsewhere on the part of 
the Publishing Committee, with obvious reference to the state of pub- 
lic feeling towards the Society." But did not their report reproach 
that very committee for not having "the magnanimity to give a rea- 
son for their silence?" Did they not speak of the appearance of "a 
document at length issued by way of vindication ;" implying that noth- 
ing had appeared "in the Messenger and elsewhere," of that nature ? 

"EFFECTS OF THIS POLICY." 

Your Committee are entitled to the honor of inaugurating a new 
philosophy, if not " a new policy." Cause for effect, effect without 
cause, and cause without effect, are interchanged and transposed 
with surprising facility. They say, "This policy of omission, sup- 
pression, and evasive silence on "the subject of slavery, which maybe 
fairly said to characterize the present administration of the Tract So- 
ciety, tends to degrade the moral sense of Christians at the south, 
with reference to that system of iniquity, which they should labor 
continually to abolish." And your Committee revert again to Gurney 
and Lundie Duncan as their only illustr3,tions. I have shown conclu- 



27 

sively that both are unmistakable in their incidental testimony against 
slavery and the slave-trade. I have shown that Mather's Essays, in the 
form in which your Committee demand their publication might "de- 
grade the moral sense of Christians at the South," while Burder's edi- 
tion, now complained of, could not have any such tendency. I have 
shown that there has been no "evasive silence." Your Committee 
then, are without premises for their conclusions, without causes .for 
alleged effects, without facts as even the basis for their fictions. Nay, 
more, they charge upon the Tract Society the consequences of their 
own and their associates' relentless war upon the South, and seek to 
shift the responsibility of a natural and inevitable reaction in south- 
ern feeling caused by the fanatical zeal of some northern men, and 
northern papers, upon a Christian institution steadily pursuing its 
appropriate work 1 Your Committee have the assurance to arraign 
the Tract Society for "helping to create that vicious and arrogant 
public sentiment for slavery, before which this great Society now 
bows in humiliating silence !" How ? When ? Where ? The only 
proof of this fiction is itself a fiction : and so is the assertion that Car- 
ter's edition of Mary Lundie is " challenged at the South," because of 
the Tract Society's abridgment ; whereas the interruption to its cir- 
culation, if any, is more certainly caused by the exaggerated and false 
impressions made by such statements as are contained in their report. 

Your Committee were charged with the duty of investigating the 
relations of the American Tract Society, %ud other institutions, to 
slavery. They have reached the vital point of the question, and are 
discussing the "effects" of the policy "which may be fairly said to 
characterize the present administration of the Tract Society ;" and 
here, if anywhere, you would naturally expect a candid allusion to 
those general reformatory relations of evangelizing, converting agen- 
cies, which Christians and Christian ministers have been wont to 
claim as one of the glories of the gospel. I confess my astonishment 
at the total silence of your Committee on this point. If I did not feel 
confident that it was the result of that intense one-idea-ism which 
ardent minds are liable to, especially when conscientiously wrong, I 
should fear lest political and philanthropic alliances had seduced your 
Committee from their evangelical affinities, and that we must mourn 
over new wrecks of character and of faith on the strands of scepti. 
cism. And my amazement is the more profound, that your Committee 
could*not discover in all their investigations, one relieving fact, one 
redeeming element, one hopeful influence of the Tract Society's wide- 



28 

spread labors at the Soutli ; inasmuch as I recal a series of editorial 
articles in the Independent, so full, and explicit, and candid in their 
exhibitions of the real and obvious effects of these labors, as to have 
neutralized the influence of their subsequent complaints. And I 
could not help thinking that an elaborate report to an ecclesiastical 
body ought to be as candid and truthful as newspaper editorials. 
But perhaps the "responsibility" of editors does not extend even 
to the reading of their own columns. 

THE INDEPKNDENT CITED AGAINST THE REPORT. 

At the hazard of prolixity, allow me to cite some proofs of the 
"omission, suppression, and evasive silence" of your Committee as to 
"the effects of the policy which may fairly be said to characterize 
the present administration of the Tract Society," drawn from the only 
quarter which your Committee may regard as authoritative — the edi- 
torial columns of the Independent. And lest it should be thought that 
the quotations are made from inconsiderate and rash articles, it is 
due to your Committee to cite the announcement which immediately 
precedes the quotations, as follows: "It is no caprice which moves 
us to take up the discussion of this subject. We take up the busi- 
ness deliberately, with a full sense of the importance of what we are 
doing, and not unmindful of the consequences," etc. that your 
Committee had "taken up the business" with the same deliberation, 
and with the same regard for consequences 1 It would, at least, have 
rendered this long review needless. 

"We honor the American Tract Society," say the editors of the 
Independent, Jan. 11, 1855. "We thankfully acknowledge its great 
usefulness, and especially its usefulness in the southern and south- 
western states. We believe it is doing, indirectly, more than any 
other institution — more than could be done directly, by twenty anti- 
slavery societies — in the great work of teaching the slaves to read, 
and of raising them, with their masters, to the stage of civilization in 
which their emancipation will be an irresistible necessity." Could 
not your Report have quoted such a paragraph from the Independ- 
ent, as easily. as it copied bitter things from Jay's letter? But it 
might have weakened the force of the cry for revolution I 

The very next number of the Independent employs three columns 
in showing the "effects of this policy," and a few quotations will be 
apposite. Thus, when combating the sentiment of the supgjriority 
of the slave-holding states, as compared with the free, in the abun- 
dance of reUgious privileges, the Independent says, "The most pe- 



29 

remptory refutation of the statements and arguments now referred to, 
may be gathered from its (the Tract Society's) reports and other pub- 
lications, in which it presents to patriotic and Christian minds its 
plans and its labors. For example, in a Httle pamphlet recently pub- 
lished, (Principles and Facts,) they say, 'The southern and south- 
western states present a wide and important field,' etc. [Here is the 
"Tract of 16 pages," which in January, is characterized as "presenting 
to patriotic and Christian minds the Tract Society's plans, and its 
labors ;" and in August, is caricatured as "the Committee's Defense" — 
"recently published," in January, and "lately issued," in August 1] 
And the Independent adds to its extended quotation from the docu- 
ments of the Society, the comment, " Every year — perhaps we might 
say every month — the Society is laying before thoughtful and con- 
scientious people throughout the whole extent of our common coun- 
try, just such statements as these, concerning the ignorance, the irre- 
ligion, the poverty, the very barbarism of counties and districts, and 
masses of population at the South." (And the editor might have 
added, at the North and West, too.) " All this has a mommtom hearing on 
the ever-agitated subject of slavery" — though your Committee of inves- 
tigation did not perceive it. "So far as these statements are read by 
thinking people in the southern states," the Independent proceeds, 
"society there is growing conscious of its own wants; and in pro- 
portion as southern society becomes conscious of^ts own wants, it 
must needs become silently conscious of the great evil by which it is 
thus darkened and depressed. On the other hand, the effect of these 
continually iterated statements on religious people at the North, is an 
ever-spreading and deepening abhorrence of slavery as an institution 
in society. Clergymen especially, of various denominations, read 
these statements, and retain the impression of them. They receive 
these statements not with the necessary suspicion with which they 
hear an anti-slavery lecture, or read the publications of anti-slavery 
societies, but with undoubting confidence in the competence and 
credibility of the witnesses. Perhaps it would not be too much to 
say that, to the masses of testimony continually given by the Tract 
Society in this undesigned and incidental way, not less than to any 
other influence, the clergy of the North are indebted for that unan- 
imity of abhorrence with which they look upon every project for the 
extension of slavery into new territories," etc. 

Why, if your Committee had not the magnanimity to acknowledge 
their indebtedness to the Tract Society, as the Independent does, for 



30 

awakening " the ever spreading and deepening abhorrence of slavery " 
at the North, had they not the candor to recognize this " momentous 
bearing on the ever-agitated subject of slavery" at the South, as pre- 
sented in the columns of their own organ ? 

But this is not all. The Independent says, "The operations of 
the American Tract Society in the slave-holding states are constantly 
and powerfully counteracting the natural effects of slavery there, and 
aiding the action of all the influences that will ultimately accomplish 
the abolition of slavery. We are far from imputing such an inten- 
tion to the managers or servants of the Society." 

Well, we are not discussing "intentions," but "effects." Your 
Commitke. assert that the effect of the "policy which fairly charac- 
terizes the present administration of the Tract Society is to debase 
the moral sense of southern Christians, to help create a vicious and 
arrogant public sentiment /or slavery," and of course to retard its 
removal ; and not a line in the report intimates that there are any 
qualifications or drawbacks to these "effects:" while the. Independent 
asserts that the same policy "constantly and powerfully counteracts 
the natural effects of slavery, and aids the action of all the influences 
that will ultimately accomplish the abolition of slavery." The report 
asserts a debasing influence on the South: the Independent claims 
an enlightening influence not only on the South, but also on the 
North. 

MORE ^ROM THE INDEPENDENT. 

The Independent further concedes that "the Tract Society is 
doing a great work among the enslaved population," and says, "No 
intelligent person, acquainted with the fascinating books for children 
which the colporteurs are vending and giving away so abundantly, 
can doubt that where such books are in the hands of children and 
illiterate white persons living in the midst of slaves, and in habits of 
constant and friendly intercourse with them, every slave of ordinary 
capacity, in whom the grace of God has awakened a desire to read 
the word of God, or whose mind under whatever impulse, aspires 
toward intellectual development, can easily learn the alphabet. No 
man can doubt that where white children and adults, equally unlet- 
tered with the slaves around them, are rejoicing in that excitement 
which attends the acquisition of the power to read, and in that con- 
scious growth of the mind which comes of reading what the mind 
can feed upon — the slaves are also learning to read, and rising with 
sure and steady motion in the scale of intellectual and moral develop- 



31 

ment. The Tract Society is a great educator in these regions ; ' the 
schoolmaster is abroad' there in the person of the colporteur. Ho^^ 
the colporteur teaches people to read may be seen in the following 
specimen." (Here follows a fact from a colporteur's report.) And the 
Independent continues : "Could not a slave learn to read in the same 
way? Are not thousands of them learning to read where those beau- 
tiful little books from Nassau-street are scattered like 'leaves in Val* 
lambrosa V " etc. 

Is it to be understood by the "evasive silence" of your Committee 
as to all these matters which appear to the editors of the Independent 
to have some relations to the subject assigned to them, that your Com- 
mittee dissent from the Independent, or that it is of no account as to 
their ulterior objects that a grand and peaceful system of popular edu- 
cation for black and white is " abroad," with its elevating power ? And 
even if there were such discordances between your Committee and 
the editors, might not your Committee have intimated to your body 
that some weak persons at the North did entertain some such views, 
and thus have given the Tract Society the benefit of a doubt whether 
they were doing unmixed evil ? 

But I have not done with the Independent's opposition to the 
views of your report. The editors continue : "The Tract Society is 
doing a great work for those portions of the white population in the 
southern states who have been most depressed and degraded by the 
institution of slavery. These poor whites are found everywhere ; they 
are the materials of which mobs are made. But by a natural pres- 
sure they are partially crowded out of the rich plantation counties 
into the "back counties," where slave-labor cannot be profitably em- 
ployed. In these districts it is that the Tract Society finds its most 
inviting and hopeful field of action. Thus the American Tract Society 
is the true southern-aid society. Unembarrassed by any sectarian, 
[sectional,] or ecclesiastical relations, it brings new light and a new 
life and power to the aid of whatever church arrangements it finds in 
existence. Its books fall into the hands of ministers who have just 
learning enough to read them ; and these ministers find themselves 
brought into contact with Edwards, Doddridge, Baxter, Owen, and a 
host of gifted minds raised up in successive ages for the guidance and 
advancement of the church. The same books, and others far more 
elementary, find currency among the people, get established in many 
a household, and waken the old and the young to new ideas. The 
consequence is ... , revivals of religion take place. Sunday-schools are 

3 



32 

Ci-taUishcd. Secular-schools folloto. Newspapers begin to circulate; — the 
American Messenger first — others of a more miscellaneous character after- 
wards. Thus a great change, religiom, moral, intellectual, and ultimately 
political, is slowly taking place, in thise communities." But your Commit- 
tee ignoi'e it all I 

Would that I had space for the "illustrations" of this subject 
from the documents of the Society, of which the editors of the Inde- 
pendent quote a full column. But I must content myself with their 
comments on them, which follow : , 

" Now we hold, and we are confident that every intelligent person 
must admit, that where such work is going forward in the impover- 
ished and benighted districts of the South, the day is approaching 
when the political domination of the slave-holding interest must be 
greatly weakened. These poor people as they grow in knowledge, 
and as their communities are more and more pervaded with the 
spirit of religious awakening and progress, as they take the business 
of their own improvement and advancement more and more into 
their own hands, feeling more and more that it is the greatest of their 
interests, will grow more truly democratic — will gradually throw off 
the yoke of a slave-holding oUgarchy, and will be felt as a force in 
the legislation and government of their own states and the Union. 
As they come into a sort of communion and intercourse with evan- 
gelical Christendom at large by familiarity with those books of relig- 
ious experience which are classical with all the churches of the free 
states and of Great Britain, [how can they when the "inauguration 
of a new policy arrests the action of the Tract Society ?"] and know 
that those books, however expurgated for their use, were written by 
men whose feelings and opinions were wholly adverse to slavery, they 
will outgrow that fanatical horror of 'abolition' by means of which 
their demagogues in church and state are now ruling them. The 
American Tract Society, without any distinct aim or purpose in that 
direction, is contributing powerfully to the ultimate abolition of 
slavery." 

Such are the convincing proofs of the "omission, suppression, and 
evasive silence" of your Committee, gathered from the columns of the 
Independent as to the " effects of this policy." May I not ask if the 
views thus presented are not quite as important as a rehash of their 
own and others' mistaken accounts of changes in Gurney and 
Duncan, which form the only basis of their sweeping and unfounded 
charge, that the Tract Society has "debased the moral sense of 



southern Christians" and "helped to create that vicious and arrogant 
public sentiment /or slavery, before which this great Society of evan- 
gelical Christians bows in humiliating silence ?" 

I leave the editors of the Independent to settle their differences 
among themselves, and their differences with your Committee. The 
only sensible solution seems to be, that in January, the Indepen- 
dent was seeking for truth : in August, your Committee were seeking 
a revolution. 

"THE REMET)Y." — REVOLUTION. 

Your Committee, borrowing the suggestion from the usages of 
political demagogues, recommend that "the members of the Society, 
severally or in companies, address to each member of the Publishing 
Committee, and to the Secretaries, the simple inquiry : Are you in 
favor of bringing the influence of the American Tract Society, through 
its ordinary publications to bear against the system of American 
slavery?" etc. "If this question shall be answered in the affirmative, 
the course of the Society in future will be plain. If in the negative, 
on the part of any or all the members of the Committee, or of the 
Secretaries, let there be at the annual election of the Board of Direc- 
tors a vote equivalent to a vote in the British Parliament of 'want of 
confidence in the existing ministry.'" How naturally political prece- 
dents suggest themselves to your Committee, while laying their revo- 
lutionary plans 1 That this language means revolution, and nothing 
else, is clear from the remark intended to smother the scruples of 
some men who may be supposed to retain a respect for life-long fidel- 
ity to the cause of God — "There is no reason why an officer of any 
benevolent Society, however valuable his services, or however esti- 
mable his character, should have a life-lease of his office, or should be 
continued in that office for form's sake, when he is unwilling to con- 
form the policy of the institution to the known wishes of the great 
body of his constituents." 

Your Committee would have all the members of the Society, 
"severally or in companies address each member of the Publishing 
Committee and the Secretaries ;" and every inquiry must of course 
have a reply,, or there will be a new score of complaints opened for 
discourtesy and " evasive silence." There are about twelve thousand 
members. Should only half the whole constituency follow the advice 
of your Committee, and write individually, it would make fifty-four 
thousand letters to be wi'itten, and of course the same number of 



34 

replies to be sent. If we suppose each person addressed to write 
fifty letters a day — which is a pretty good day's work — it would 
require one hundred and twenty days each for nine men, to perform 
the task imposed by your Committee — rather a heavy burden, one 
would think, to add to the thirty years of gratuitous and unrequited 
toil of the Publishing Committee — to say nothing of the labors of the 
Secretaries. Meanwhile, what is to become of the proper work of the 
Committee and Secretaries? Of that your Committee seem not to 
have thought. ^ 

"THE GENERAL CHRI3TIAK SENTIMENT." 

But there is an assumption running through this and other parts 
of your Committee's report, which underlies and taints the whole 
document, namely, that "the known wishes of the great body of con- 
stituents," that "the Christian sentiment of the supporters of the 
Tract Society," that "the general Christian sentiment of their con- 
stituents," are in conflict with the "policy which mixy fairly be said 
to characterize the present administration of the Tract Society on 
the subject of .slavery," and are in harmony with the spirit and aims 
of your Committee's Report. Some men think they are turning the 
world upside down when they are only turning upside down in the 
world. What shadow of proof have your Committee of the correct- 
ness of their genei'alizatiou ? "What data for their wholesale assump- 
tion ? 

During the past three or four years a relentless war has been 
waged on the Tract Society by a few public journals, and the utmost 
efforts have been made to sap the foundations of public confidence in 
its character. A mode of assault has been adopted wholly unwar- 
rantable. Is it too much to say of this crusade, that "judgment 
is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off; for truth is 
fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter ; yea, truth faileth ; and 
he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey : and the Lord saw 
it, and it displeased him, that there was no judgment." With the 
patience of martyrdom, the Tract Society has borne and forborne to 
the last ; like the Master it owns and honors, when it "was reviled, 
it reviled not again ; when it suffered, it threatened not ; but com- 
mitted itself to him that judgeth righteously." It has pursued its 
course of quiet unobtrusive usefulness with the vain hope that a one- 
sided and groundless controversy would sometime have an end ; and 
with the belief that "if when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it 
patiently, this is acceptable with God" — more acceptable than to 



add to the elements of strife by a vindication which must necessarily 
implicate the character of good but mistaken men. It has been an 
anomalous and a sublime spectacle of Christian patience and forbear- 
ance. 

What has been the result ? The giving, praying friends of the 
Society have adhered to it. During the year of bitterest persecu- 
tion — which was also a year of unexampled financial and commercial 
embarrassment, and almost of famine — the donations to the treasury 
were incrmsed: and it was only after this result that the tactics of the 
complainers took the direction of discouraging the starvation regime. 
Now while such a result may be no certain criterion of public senti- 
ment, it is certain that an opposite result would have been plead as 
proof positive of wide-spread disaffection. 

SENTIMENT OF COLLEGES, NEWSPAPERS, AND ECCLESIASTICAL BODIES. 

Our institutions of secular and sacred learning are supposed to 
furnish some index of the "general Christian sentiment" on great 
questions of Christian morals ; but with the single exception of Ober- 
lin, there is no evidence that the professors of any evangelical college 
or theological seminary in the land are in sympathy with the objects 
of your Committee and their associates. 

The periodical press, especially the religious press, is believed to 
reflect somewhat accurately the "general Christian sentiment" of the 
country and of "the Society's constituents." But it is a somewhat 
impressive fact, that not a single religious journal in the land, discon- 
nected from the denomination with which your Committee are asso- 
ciated, (and but half of those,) not a single Presbyterian, Baptist, 
Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran, Dutch or German Reformed paper 
has been known to utter a word of sympathy with your movement, or 
has recorded a complaint of the policy of the present administration 
of the Tract Society on the subject of slavery. The newspapers which 
have made all this noise, without a single echoing voice from the real 
organs of " the genera/ Christian sentiment," can all be counted on the 
fingers of both hands, if not on a single hand. When men profess to 
be the exponents of the "general Christian sentiment" which is to in- 
fluence a catholic institution, they should rise out of the atmosphere 
of their own sectional and sectarian position, to the clearer, if not 
purer region of an evangelical brotherhood. 

The action of ecclesiastical bodies gives some clue to "the known 
wishes of the great body of constituents" of a religious charity : 
would that it were alwavs a reliable one ! Yet this test fails to re- 



I 



36 

veal any general or considerable lack of confidence in the "present 
administration of the Tract Society," or any common sympathy with 
revolutionary designs. It is true that a few of the lesser Congrega- 
tional bodies have spoken, with more or less severity of rebuke, of 
what they had been made to believe was wrong in the Tract Society's 
policy, under the same kind of leadership, and with the same sort of 
misrepresentations which induced your own action. Five or six 
churches in Connecticut have "protested" against what the Religious 
Herald said was wrong ; and the General Association of that state 
passed a harmless resolution to satisfy the clamor of a few restless 
spirits. The General Convention of Vermont have the matter under 
advisement, and will undoubtedly act with caution. The General 
Conference of Maine, with their accustomed Christian prudence, have 
refrained from condemning a Christian charity unheard. The Gen- 
eral Association of Massachusetts, after investigation and discussion, 
refused to commit themselves to the new measures. Some Western 
Congregational Associations, local and general, pai'tly under the same 
leadership and influences brought to bear on you, have passed resolu- 
tions in harmony with your action. And this is the utmost extent of 
ecclesiastical action in the premises But were these oecumenical coun- 
cils, even for the limited districts they represent ? Were they not the 
minor and inconsiderable bodies of a single denomination — composed of 
small delegations chosen for other objects — which, however respecta- 
ble, will hardly claim to be the church, or to represent "the general 
Christian sentiment of the Society's constituents ?" And even many of 
these acted under erroneous impressions as to facts, and in a season 
of great political excitement on the very question inv^olved in their 
blind censure of the Tract Society. Does any man believe that all, 
or any of them, would repeat their action with no more than the facts 
of this letter before them ? Or, will any one claim that all, or either 
of these bodies, would or could have acted as they did, if, like the 
ecclesiastical bodies of nearly all other denominations, there had been 
a lay representation in them ? 

I repeat, and would emphasize the remark, that what is claimed 
as " the general Christian sentiment," is the voice of the minority of 
the ministers alone, of a single denomination. If a single Presbytery, 
Synod, or General Assembly, of any branch of the great PreAyterian 
family of churches, has, directly or indirectly, given utterance to a 
word of dissent to the " policy of the present administration of the 
Tract Society on the subject of slavery," or of sympathy with the 



m 

views of your Committee ; or if any other of the evangelical ecclesi- 
astical organizations of the country, great or ^all, has uttered any 
thing on this subject, I have been so unfortunate as not to have 
known it. No. Your Committee count without their host, when 
they seek to rank with themselves, either the great body of ministers 
or people of their own denomination, or of that grand constituency 
which numbers hundreds of thousands of the pious and the liberal 
and the faithful of the great evangelical family. 

It is but justice to the noble band of Christians who are embraced 
in file Congregational communion itself, to release them, as a body, 
from all responsibility for th» acts and influence of a few journals 
sailing under their flag. Even the comparatively few who have suf- 
fered themselves to be misled and imposed upon, will be the first to 
renounce, if not to denounce, the false lights which have seduced 
them from their fealty to a true and blessed cause. They love truth 
and right, and peace and unity, and evangelism. And both ministers 
and people of the Congregational churches, especially in New Eng- 
land, will recoil with horror from the responsibility of revolutionizing 
a Society which they have long fostered and loved, at the call of a 
Committee who must stand convicted of grosser misdeeds, in a single 
document, than they allege, and falsely allege, to have been com- 
mitted in a third of a century, by the Society they would revolu- 
tionize. 

APPEAL TO COUNTRY MEMBERS. 

Before dismissing this topic, it may be well to notice briefly one 
or two of the statements made at your meeting, intended to stimulate 
the zeal of coxmtry viembers of the Society, for a revolution in its official 
management. Thus, it was asserted that " affairs are conducted in 
a close, secret way, by the Tract managers." " The business of elect- 
ing Directors and an Executive Committee was crowded into the 
hour immediately preceding the anniversary addresses. It was all 
' a sham,' ' a sham,' as it is now conducted." Pray, how would these 
gentlemen have the business conducted? The arrangements for elec- 
tion have always been made with the view of accommodating the 
largest number of the constituents of the Society. A change was 
made at the last anniversary from the closing hour of the public 
meeting to the hour preceding the anniversary, and full public notice 
given, because it had been intimated that it would afford more full 
opportunity for discussion. The arrangement is similar to that of 
the American Bible Society. The hour has hitherto been found more 
than enough to transact all the business ; and if more time were ne- 



38 

cessarj, a motion for adjournment to an hour when it would be more 
convenient for the Society's friends, would always be in order. What 
is meant by " a close and secret way of conducting affairs," I do not 
understand. The friends of the Society may know at any time any 
of its affairs, if they will take the pains to inquire ; and once a year, 
in its Annual Report, they do know all of them, if they take the 
trouble to read. 

Another motive to revolution was presented in your body thus : 
" The present officers don't mean to surrender their trust — perhaps 
wjuld try to keep the building by process of law." " This buildtng 
is ours, they will tell you, and you Johnny Raws from the country may 
pay your money, but we will lay it out as it suits us." Another 
version of the reporters is as follows: "Whenever the givers shall 
rise and appoint a new Committee, it will be found that the present 
managers will not give way, but will insist that the Tract House was 
built with New York money, and is owned in New York, and that 
people in the country have no right to do any thing but give their 
funds." [I cannot bring myself even to notice such language as 
" cowards," " cowardice," etc., applied to the Publishing Committee 
in your presence. Gentlemen don't use or hear such epithets.] 

Now see how this new version of the fable of the " three black 
crows" gained currency. In the first Annual Report, in 1826, the 
Committee say, " AU the donors to the Society's House reside in the 
city of New York, and all the funds appropriated to that object have 
been contributed for that explicit purpose. JVot only are none of the 
funds contributed for the general objects of the Society appropriated to 
the erection of the House, but the Society is presented with the use 
of it, rent free, from and after the first day of this month," p. 19. In 
the second Report, (1821,) the Committee say, "The Society bears 
no expense of rent for the House, erected by the liberality of the citi- 
zens of New York," etc., p. 15. In almost every public document of 
the Society for thirty years, the statement has been reiterated, with 
the simple and sole object of apprising contributors in every part of the 
country that their benefactions would be applied directly to the benevolent 
work of the institution, and not to the building necessary for its accom- 
modation, which had been provided by the liberality of Christians in 
the city where it is located. The pamphlet entitled, " Facts and 
Principles" repeated this statement, in connection with other intro- 
ductory statements as to the Society's "material interests" on the 
first page, originally bearing a picture of the Tract House ; in the 



as 

following form : " The building was erected in 1825, the year the 
Society was formed, by funds contributed in New York," etc. 

A writer in the Independent devotes a column and a half to the 
exposure of the Tract Society's dishonesty in speaking of its "mate- 
rial interests" at the beginning of the document, which his morbid 
imagination has converted into "a tract for the tirnes:" "just issued" 
with a Jesuitical design ; and he too becomes "lofty like Luther" in 
his denunciation of the bravado of the Tract Society in thrusting 
forward the Tract House as belonging to New York, and as being a 
MalakofiF which all the forces of New England cannot conquer ! When 
this amiable tale gets before the New York General Association, and 
the conspirators wish to awaken jealousy of metropolitan influence 
as a makeweight in their desperate game, you are told that "the 
present ofiicers don't intend to surrender their trust — p§phaps would 
try to keep the building by process of law." "This building is ours, 
they will tell you, and you Johnny Raws from the country may pay 
your money, but we will lay it out as it suits us 1" 

Can that be a righteous cause that needs such aids ? Can a Chris- 
tian institution be revolutionized by such means ? 

RECAPITULATION. 

I have done with the report of your Committee to investigate 
"the relation of the American Tract Society to slavery." I have 
shown that it is not the report of "the Committee" you appointed ; 
that it does not present the results of careful investigation, but of pre- 
judiced suspicions and cavils ; that the charge of " suppression and 
alteration of sentiments on the subject of slavery" is unfounded — 
Matherh "Essays" never having had an anti-slavery sentiment in it to 
be altered or suppressed ; the changes having been made half a cen- 
tury ago by Burder in England — without any such note as your Com- 
mittee allege ; the Tract Society's edition having been dropped ten 
years since, for reasons wholly foreign from this subject ; and the 
original edition being a pro-slavery book ; — Gurney's work having 
been revised by the author, and being still what your Committee say 
it is not ; — Mary Lundie Duncan having been entrusted to the Com- 
mittee by the author to be abridged, and leaving her testimony too 
unquestionable for the purposes of your Committee — so that in this, 
as in all the other works complained of, your Committee are them- 
selves guilty of "suppression and alteration." I have shown that 
instead of the "avoidance of the subject of slavery in all their later 
publications" — which your Committee could not have known if it 



40 

were true — the very publications they complain of disprove their 
allegation, and the Independent itself demonstrates the converse of 
their proposition ; and that the realissue involves "the inauguration of 
a new policy which would unquestionably arrest the action of the 
Society," and denationalize it by abolitionizing it, thus abandoning 
the South "to take care of itself;" and that such a revolutionary and 
suicidal policy would be resisted by good men everywhere, and must 
be precluded by the catholic basis. 

I have shown that this basis, as appears from its palpable import 
and its history, is not restricted in its scope to "doctrinal differences 
of a theological character" and " denominational sentiments," but that 
more divisive questions even, of morals and reform, are necessarily 
excluded ; and that consequently the Society is and has been deterred 
from "publifliing Tracts upon o7ie side of political and agitating ques- 
tions" — that slavery is such a question, and that the fundamental 
principles of the Society preclude it from being "turned into a ma- 
chinery of anti-slavery propagandism," though it may and does, "in 
the natural and ordinary course of its publications," especially in its 
"later publications," allude to its evils in terms of decided reprehen- 
sion ; and that, if the Society has not given full expression to the 
united sentiment of evangelical Christians on this subject, "the in- 
auguration of a new [abolition] policy" "wou/i arrest its action," and 
destroy its usefulness, 

I have further shown, that the pamphlet brought before your body 
as the "Committee's defense" "lately issued," is a stated issue for 
another purpose, and that it was so quoted with commendation by 
the Independent nearly a year ago ; but that if it had been a " de- 
fense" as represented, the indecent caricature of it is unworthy of 
Christian men and an insult to your body, and that the subsequent 
discovery and pretended correction of your Committee's mistake in- 
volved them in new inconsistencies. 

I have demonstrated at length, from the editorial columns of the 
Independent, that the representations of your Committee of the 
" effects of the Society's policy " are prejudiced and unfounded — nay, 
the exact converse of the truth — that while they charge without 
proof, that it has "debased the moral sense of southern Christians," 
and "helped to create a vicious and arrogant public sentiment /«?r 
slaveiy," the Independent proves that " it is doing indirectly more 
than any other institution — more than could be done directly by 
twenty anti-slavery societies — in the great work of teaching the 



slaves to read, and of raising them with their masters to that stage 
of civilization in which their emancipation will be an inevitable 
necessity." 

I have thus shown that *^the Remedy" proposed by your Commit- 
tee — revolution — is an impertinence and a Avrong ; that the assump- 
tion that "the general Christian sentiment" demands any change or 
would favor revolutionary designs, even without any correction of 
the misrepresentations of years, is baseless — as shown by the un- 
wavering support of giving and praying men, by the position of 
leading minds in our institutions of learning, by the tone of the press, 
and by the action or inaction of ecclesiastical bodies, demonstrating 
that the disaffection is restricted to a limited portion of a single de- 
nomination, and without any responsibility resting on even that de- 
nomination for its rude and crude manifestations ; and that the state- 
ments by which it is sought to whet the zeal of country members, of 
a spirit of secrecy, obstinacy, and defiance on the part of the mana- 
gers of the Society, are as unreliable as the Koran. 

I have hitherto adhered strictly to the topics presented in your 
Committee's report, in the order in which they are arranged, without 
turning aside for an instant to discuss collateral issues. You will 
not complain, then, if I pause a moment before I close, to consider, 

THE CHAKACTER AND "EFFECTS" OF YOUR 
COMMITTEE'S "POLICY." 

If in doing this, I embrace the effects of the documents and arti- 
cles which furnish the materials for your Report, no injustice will be 
done to any party. 

The least that can be said of this onset is, that it is unwise. Even 
a just cause may be defeated and ruined by a reckless and mistaken 
advocacy. If your Committee had spent a twelvemonth of study to 
prevent the usefulness of the Tract Society as a temperate opponent 
of slavery within the limitations of its constitution, they could not 
have devised a more probable hinderance to such a result than their 
report furnishes. Candid men recoil from such leanings and alli- 
ances. Besides, an institution with a catholic basis, and with wide 
and delicate relations, cannot stir a step under the dictation of a 
small body of its constituents. Whatever may have been the ob- 
stacles and difficulties in the way of more decided action as to ex- 
isting evils, they are complicated in a tenfold measure by such a 
course as your Committee and their allies have pursued, even if it 
should not arrest the good already in progress. 



42 

Tliis policy is unkind. It is indecorous towards the faithful and 
self-sacrificing Committee, who have given their time and talent for 
thirty years without earthly reward, to what they believe to be a 
great and a sacred cause ; and who can have no conceivable motive 
for doing or neglecting to do other than what is right in the sight of 
God, and in view of their solemn relations and responsibilities. It is 
ungenerous towards Executive officers, whose lives are a "living sacri- 
fice" for the highest interests of the sacred trust committed to them, 
and who ought not to be subjected to the indignities which even 
ministers of the gospel have in some instances offered them under the 
false impressions of your Report. It is unkind to the agents and 
colporteurs scattered over the land, whose spirits are tried, and 
whose work is doubled by the groundless suspicions and objections 
this policy engenders — some of them, indeed, having been persecuted 
on this score in the Northern states, to the point where they have 
felt constrained to resign their commissions. And it is unkind to a 
confiding Christian public, who want to love and sustain the Tract 
Society, but who have been educated with the habit of believing what 
they read in a "religious^' newspaper, and are liable to be heedlessly 
jostled from their confidence by this policy. 

This policy is untruthful. 1 should be glad to believe, and would 
fain hope that it is unintentionally so. But I am dealing with facts, not 
intentions. And I appeal to the preceding discussion for painful and 
overwhelming proof that this charge is well founded. The real respon- 
sibility of your Committee is concealed ; even the pamphlet edition of 
the Report presents it as the "reportof the Committee" appointed the 
previous year. The show of investigation is without investigation. 
Quotations are presented as entire, which are garbled. Citations are 
made with no corresponding passages, or with passages having an op- 
posite sense from that attributed to them. A book is brought forward 
as anti-slavery, which does not contain an anti-slavery sentiment, but 
would be regarded in all quarters at the present day, as pro-slavery. 
A false interpretation is put upon the fundamental law of the Soci- 
ety. A public document is grossly misrepresented as to its objects, 
and caricatured in its contents. The Society is arraigned as pro- 
slavery in its influence, against the representation even of the Inde- 
pendent itself. And the "general Christian sentiment" is claimed as 
demanding a change, or. a revolution, without evidence, and contrary 
to all fact. What can be the effects of such a policy but to weaken 
popular respect for the ministry, and for ministerial bodies ; for relig- 



43 

ious men and religious newspapers ? If truth and candor flee from 
these quarters, where shall the deceived public seek them ? 

This policy is unsafe. It imperils the usefulness and the very ex- 
istence of every Christian body, institution, and interest in the land. 
If the Tract Society can be changed in its fundamental policy, or 
revolutionized in its character or oflicial management, by detraction 
and misrepresentation, there is not a pastor of a church, a church 
organization, a board or society, large or small, in the whole land, 
that is secure for a day in character or position. The foundation of 
all sound morals, and of all order, would be broken up with the in- 
auguration of this "new policy," ushered in under the sacred name of 
freedom and humanity 1 

This policy is unchristian. There is not a reference to the Bible in 
it. It is a violation of the great law of love, as embodied in the dec- 
alogue, and especially in the ninth commandment — possibly the tenth. 
It is in direct contravention of the spirit and precepts of the 13th 
chapter of Paul's epistle to the Corinthians, of the Saviour's last 
prayer, and of every principle distinctive of a gospel of j^mce. It is 
on this ground that a writer at the West publicly reprobates it as 
"baneful, loosening the foundations of faith in God, and destroying 
the principle and the terms of confidence between man and man, and 
awakening universal suspicion and enmity." It tends to restrain the 
people from receiving and reading a literature replete with saving 
gospel truth, because of falsely impeached fidelity to the cause of 
freedom. It would prevent access to the slave with the means of in- 
tellectual and moral elevation, and of salvation too. It would shut 
out evangelical influences from nearly half the country, on the pre- 
tence of social and political reform. It ignores the converting power 
of God's truth as a means of reformation. It virtually exalts other 
principles and interests of a humane kind above the principles and 
interests of the everlasting gospel and the spiritual kingdom of our 
Lord and Eedeemer. It is the proper work of infidelity, in the spirit 
of the world, undertaken by Christian hands, in Christ's name. 

CONCLUSION. 
This review has been the most unwelcome task of my Ufe. 
I have neither taste, talent, nor time for controversy. However 
necessary, at times, I loathe it. I cannot be seduced or driven into 
a frequent resort to it. But, as even the most peaceful and timid 
animals, when worried and hunted to the last extremity, will resort 
to means of self-defence ; so, after reflection and prayer, I have 



44 

determined to confront the pursuers of an unoffending institution — 
not with the intention of injuring them, but of defending it, I never 
attended a meeting of the Publishing Committee, whose action is 
impeached. No member of that Committee is aware of my intention 
to write this letter, and not a line of it has been read to or by them, 
or either of them. Nor is any member of any other Committee of 
the Society, nor the Society itself, in any form or manner, responsible 
for this paper, or any part of it ; yet I have spared no pains to ascertain 
the exact facts from official sources. I write as a man, as an Ameri- 
can, as a Congregationalist, and as a minister of Christ's gospel. 
" Hear me for my cause." I write with the hope of disabusing your 
minds, and, so-far as I may, the public mind, of injurious impressions 
which I believe and I know are baseless. If I have failed to carry 
conviction, I trust other and abler pens will do better justice to an 
important subject. It is time that where there has been so much 
error, there should be some truth. 

You are to be the sole judges, dear brethren, of the course de- 
manded by truth and righteousness on the part of your Association, 
in view, of your "unanimous approval" of such a Report as I have 
shown your Committee's to be. Almost of course, you will find it ne- 
cessary, for the honor of Congregationalism, and the credit of your 
own body, to review, and perhaps reverse your verdict against an 
untried and unoffending institution. I am willing to hope that your 
Committee intended no wrong : that in the heat of a great political con- 
troversy, and in the hurry of a hundred other cares, they were them- 
selves misled by the newspapers and documents to which they gave 
undue confidence ; and that they will themselves disavow their own 
acts, when they see how wrong they are. Spare them, then, any thing 
like a vt)te of " want of confidence." And perhaps your forbearance, 
and the lesson from experience of the evils of incautious dealing with 
the character and interests of benevolent societies, may, with the 
concurring and all-powerful grace of God, lead them to study here- 
after the things which make for peace, and for the edifying of the body 
of Christ. 

In our common Master's name, 

Yours affectionately and faithfully, 

A CONGKEGAHONALIST DIEECTOR. 



LofC. 



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NEANDER'S GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN RE- 
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